Rockets’ Players Call James Harden Out For Disrespecting Houston Teammates

With James Harden’s time as a member of the Houston Rockets coming to an end, some players on the team aren’t pulling any punches about the superstar’s behavior. Rockets center DeMarcus Cousins was blunt Wednesday when asked about Harden’s latest postgame comments in which he said Houston is “just not good enough.”

“My interest is to play with John Wall, to be brutally honest. The disrespect started way before any interview,” Cousins told reporters. “This isn’t something that, you know, all of a sudden happened last night...It’s completely unfair to the rest of the guys in the locker room.”

The Los Angeles Lakers defeated the Rockets 117-100 Tuesday night. Houston sits at 3-6 near the bottom of the Western Conference standings.

Harden requested a trade before the start of the season. He arrived late to training camp and violated the NBA’s COVID-19 protocols, forcing him to quarantine an additional four days before he could start practicing with the team.

Physically, Harden doesn’t appear to be in peak shape. Whether it’s his conditioning or simply that he isn’t giving it his all, the scoring champ’s production has fallen dramatically.

Harden has failed to score more than 21 points in all five of the games he’s played this season. The guard led the league last season with 34.3 points per game. Harden is down to 24.8 points per game this season.

On Wednesday, the Rockets made the decision to keep Harden away from the team until they could complete a trade, ESPN reports.

“End of the day, a lot of guys here wanna compete at a high level,” Wall said Tuesday night. “When the 1-15 guys all on the same page and they commit, they know their role, they know what they wanna do, they know what they wanna get out of this that’s to win, you all will be fine. But when you have certain guys in the mix that don’t wanna buy in all as one, it’s going to be hard to do anything good as a basketball team.

“We can’t dwell down on it because it’s only been nine games. Come on, man, you want to jump off the cliff off of nine games? There’s a lot of basketball still to be played.”

Houston traded Russell Westbrook for Wall shortly before the start of the season. The Harden-Wall backcourt will be broken up just a few weeks into the season.